Four Steps to Avoiding Terminal Vagueness
According to debtor’s anonymous, many people who repeatedly incur unsecured debt experience so-called “terminal vagueness” – a lack of awareness or monitoring of their finances. But you don’t have to be ready for a Twelve-Step program to be prone to this condition. Here are four steps to getting out of the terminal vagueness that besets those stuck in dissatisfaction. First, get clear about where you are now. Dissatisfaction can be diffuse and tricky to pin down, but if you divide your life into different areas (see the wheel of life assessments), you will be better able...
Read MoreTeach Your Children Well — Another Reason Not to Multi-task
Along with the mounting research that says that multi-tasking is ineffectual, let me add one more reason not to do it: your kids. If you want to teach them good manners and focus, you’d do well to practice a little mono-tasking. Maybe it’s just me, but I often have a hard time getting my kids to pay attention to what I am saying. At school, teachers instruct children to give “attentive listening,” while at home I find myself saying, “look at me when I talk to you” with ever more frustration. I was really getting annoyed with with my kids, and then I...
Read MoreMake Your New Year’s Resolution SMART
Several years ago I swore off New Year’s Resolutions. (Yes, I see the irony of that.) The annual hopeful energy and inevitable late-winter decline was a cliché, and I was too cool for all that. So I steadfastly ignored Auld Lang Syne and set personal goals willy-nilly throughout the calendar, with varying success. But as we enter a new year and a new decade, I am struck by the moment and by a desire to turn a new page and even to turn over a new leaf (how’s that for a cliché?). So then, how do we avoid the mid-February dissolution of our resolve? Make a SMART* resolution....
Read MoreTime Management Habits #2 — Make a Daily Schedule
Don’t allow yourself to come to the end of the day wondering what you did all day with no sense of accomplishment. Take charge of your time. Here’s one way: either the night before or soon after getting up, review what you need and want to get done. What is most important to you? Most urgent? Most satisfying? It sounds obvious, but establish your priorities and start with those items, building your schedule around them. Include appointments, chores, and even meals. And here’s a key: give yourself a reward or some downtime – a half hour to sip coffee and read the...
Read MoreQuantum Leap or Baby Step?
A Facebook buddy has the following quotation on his home page: “Doing is a quantum leap from imagining.” I am struck both by its truth and by the way in which it is not true. The truth of it is commonplace: talk is cheap, actions speak louder than words, wishing don’t make it so, etc. But I am also aware of the way it is not true, or rather, the way in which we exaggerate the size of the leap and make it too hard in order to excuse our inaction. Psychologically, doing can be an enormous leap. But in the words of a cd that my kids currently demand as soon as we get into the...
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